Nd, deep in a volume of Huxley's "Lectures and Essays" which
was making a profound impression upon him through its twin
merits of simple, concise language and breadth
of vision. There was in it a rational explanation of certain
elementary
processes which to Thompson had never been accounted
for save by means of the supernatural, the mysterious, the
inexplicable. Huxley was merely sharpening a function of his mind
which had been dormant
until he ran amuck among the books. He began to perceive order in the
universe and all
that it contained, that natural
phenomena could be interpreted by a
study of nature, that there was something more than a name in
geology. And he was so immersed in what he read, in the printed page
and the inevitable speculations
that arose in his mind
as he conned it, that
he was only subconsciously aware of
a woman passing his seat. Slowly, as a man roused from deep sleep
looks about him for the cause of dimly heard noises, so now
Thompson's eyes lifted from his book, and, with his mind still half
upon the last sentence read, his gaze followed the girl now some
forty feet distant in the long, quiet
room. There was no valid reason why the rustle of a woman's skirt in
passing, the faint suggestion of some delicate perfume, should have
focussed his attention. He saw scores of women and girls in the
library every day. He passed thousands on the streets. This one, now,
upon whom he gazed with
a detached interest, was like many others, a girl of medium height,
slender, well-dressed. That was all--until she paused at a desk to
have speech with a library assistant.
She turned then so that her face was in profile, so that a gleam of
hair showed under a wide
leghorn hat. And Thompson thought there could
scarcely be tw
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